The Seal (11 page)

‘What do you
need for this antidote?’ he shouted, angry at the man and at the day.

Iterius soothed
his leg and rolled his eyes in his head. ‘All I have is here.’ He patted his
breast. ‘I have brought what I need.’

Etienne kicked
him in the side. ‘Take this to your profane heart, Iterius.’ He bent down with
a knee extended from its hurts. ‘If I find you to be two-faced, I will see to
it that you shall observe one of them resting upon the palms of your hands
before you are sent to the hell that awaits you!’

The man made a
series of nods.

‘Catalan!’
Delgado came to him. ‘Pull the quarrel from that leg.’

The Catalan
smiled at the prospect and went to his task with a relish that made Iterius
whimper like an animal begging for mercy. The Catalan turned a deaf ear and put
his probing fingers to work, digging into the flesh of the man’s calf, twisting
his fingers in a corkscrew fashion until they grasped at something. He pulled
hard and the quarrel came out with a gush of blood behind it. The Egyptian
sergeant gave so high-pitched a cry that Etienne thought it might be heard even
in Famagusta,
then
Iterius rolled his eyes into his
head and lost his senses. The Catalan threw the quarrel into the day, nodded in
recognition of his fine accomplishment and, taking the cotton shirt from a
mutilated body, wrapped it tightly around the bleeding leg. This additional
abuse woke the Egyptian and he howled again.

‘Put him on his
horse. We have to keep him alive,’ Etienne said.

With all of them
saddled they made a gallop over that dry, parched road with the sky droning a
hot sun over every living and dying thing.

Etienne took a
look behind, to the blood and flesh cooking in the heat. The smell would soon
bring a natural order to everything – the flies and ants at first,
then
hawks and wild dogs would come to feed upon the
fresh-killed meat. This was the natural order of things. As commonplace as
death was to Etienne, such a thing among brothers in Christ did not seem to him
natural, it made no sense to his mind.

He put spurs to
his horse and turned his thoughts to the moment, riding away from such
a logic
and onwards to the hopes of saving his Grand
Master’s life.

A
t
the end of a long fertile plain between two mountains lay the ancient city of
Salamis. To the eye there was no memory of the Roman city except that on the
landward side two banks, one to the north and another to the south, marked the
line where the walls had once stood. From the southward bank, which grew one
with the mudflats at the mouth of the river, the reach of sand and grass and
weed stretched to a main harbour bordered by a great breakwater of stone that
ran from north to south parallel to the shore. The northern part of it extended
to a long reef, which protected the seafront of the city. The northernmost part
of the seawall closed onto the southern breakwater of a second harbour. It was
in this second harbour that sat a galley flying a Venetian flag.

That afternoon,
upon boarding the galley with Jourdain, the mercenaries and the injured
Iterius, Etienne took himself to the Grand Master and found him in his sickbed.
An illness had come upon him, the doctor said. Etienne had not wished to
believe the Egyptian’s story and was angrier now that he was forced to. He
fetched the man with his leg wrapped in blood-soaked cloth, and brought him
before the ship’s doctor. He had the sergeant by the collar and was staring
into his eyes. ‘If the Grand Master dies, I will take my time in preparing you,
Egyptian, as fitting food for sea serpents.’

Iterius cowered
and whimpered and promised promises, and following his indications the doctor
was able to make the unction, which he gave to the Grand Master while he lay
covered in sweat.

Etienne then
told the ship’s captain to send a slave to taste the food and water for poison,
and in the meantime he ordered the Norman Aubert to guard the larder.

After that he
sat with Jacques de Molay.

Despite the
poison, there were no changes upon that face – the mouth, the eyes and
brow retained their former dispositions. Only the flush that crept over the
scarred cheeks and the yellow colour over the beaded lips that took on the hue
of ash denoted the struggle for life occurring in the soul.

Etienne pondered
this countenance and saw in it that same steadfastness he remembered as a young
man being received into the Order more than twenty years before. At that time
Etienne had seen reflected in the lines of the face, in that thin-lipped mouth,
a soul built to survive all temptation and misfortune – a soul larger than
the body in which it dwelt.

Etienne leant
his head upon Jacques’ chest. Beneath the skin the heart beat strongly in its cage.
The Grand Master was fighting something greater than the poison, he told himself.
He hoped it was not beyond his powers to surpass it.

Then came the
groan of the ship’s movement and the sound of activity on the decks and Etienne
found himself overcome with fatigue. He realised he had not eaten since the
night before, nor had he taken rest in two days. Seeing that he could do
noth¬ing more for Jacques he left him in the care of the doctor and Jourdain,
posting the Catalan Delgado and the Norman Gideon at the door to the cell.
After that he took himself like an old man to the bulwarks where he stood,
staring outwards to that dimming bay and the blackened mountains, then to the
sea the colour of stone beneath a rosewater sky. This was a backward glance at
the unhappy island that despite all its difficulties had been the last bastion
of the Order in the east. It had been, he recognised, a foothold, but one too
distant to allow it a good reach to the Holy Land. And if leaving Acre had
seemed to him the beginning of
a devastation
from
which the Order would never recover, then this now was the end of that
beginning.

The galley moved
off and away from land and Etienne said to himself,
This
was a good harbour once.

On their way to
Salamis Jourdain had told him the history of the city where a great battle
between the Persians and the Greeks had taken place. Later there were
earthquakes and great waves engulfed and destroyed it, and now it lay covered
by sand.

Etienne smiled
wearily. How the boy knew such things between heaven and earth astonished him!

It had once been
the largest port before Famagusta and it was said that St Paul had sailed there
from Antioch. Etienne grunted and turned his head upwards. ‘If the Apostles had
visited all such places as are believed by men, it seems to me there would be
no time for anything else but sea travel!’ But the sails filled with breeze and
he was not heard by any man,
nor
even the gulls that
swooped over the galley hoping for a last meagre fare.

His mind turned
to the strange predicament in which they found themselves, he and his Grand
Master, and their conflict with the Order. Overnight, it seemed, they had
become enemies of some, perhaps all of the Order, and as he glanced about the
decks and the men for hire whose task it was to see to the driving of the
little ship he felt a weight in his heart. For he realised that even if the
Grand Master were to best the poison that was ailing him, even if this was
possible, they were headed for a hostile kingdom whose king was bent on their
destruction, and into the succour of a brotherhood for whom the wars in the
Holy Land were a far-off history and no more than a stone poking out of the
sand, like the walls of that city Salamis. It was therefore only a matter of
time, a matter of what day or hour, what weapon, lance or poison would find
Jacques de Molay and kill the Order with him.

Etienne had
before him, then, a struggle that seemed to him more testing than what he had
experienced face to face with Mahomet over the walls of Acre. That had been
Satan in those fields and the Devil in his heart, and they had been plainly
visible. But this was a thing new to him, this unseen foe, this enemy hidden in
the hearts of brothers, and it required a new discipline. If he was to become
the Grand Master’s watchdog then he must learn new tricks.

He contemplated
asking God, His Son and the Holy Spirit to help him in this task
but,
he asked himself, why should God turn his countenance
upon him? He imagined the great seas, swift-flowing rivers and shallow streams
that he knew ran inside his heart and limbs, and wondered if upon those vast
expanses there was not a creature gazing upwards at him wondering if its
struggles and labours were of any consequence to him.

Etienne,
mystified by such a thought, all but smiled at himself – surely Jourdain
was making his thoughts run in strange channels! He saw the impiety of
philosophy since it covered blasphemy with logic.

‘I am one with
God and God is one with me. So that whatever God is, that am I!’ he called out
to the sea, and the sky traded places with the waves and made him cling to the
rails until he felt the workings of his muscles and sinews in their extremity.

And Salamis was forgotten amid the great sea that stretched out to
the end of the world.

THE SECOND CARD

T
hey had seen the signal
from the galley. Delgado and Aubert had left some days before for Richerenches,
a house of the Order in Provence. Jacques de Molay knew that his close friend
and brother, Geoffrey de Charney, would be there. The mercenaries were to take
themselves to him with a message and return with horses.

When the sun
went down and the grey sky fell to black, Gideon rowed Etienne, Jourdain, the
Grand Master and Iterius to the inland sea that became a series of lagoons
formed by the intrusion of desolate salt marshes and sandbanks and dunes. Above
them they heard the flapping of wings and the call of ducks and other birds. To
the east the faint lights of the old port of St Louis flickered and died away
as they progressed to the west and into a little arm of the Rhone. They allowed
the tide to push them down the narrow inlet, and when they came to a deserted
seawall Jourdain attached the rope to a rusted ring in the rock and they
waited.

The river was
tame at this time of year, except for the cold breeze that picked up the swell
and caused the little boat to hit the wall.

Etienne was put
off by the frailty of the arrangement and said to the Norman, ‘When will they come?’
scanning as he did so the silver-coloured water and the perimeter of trees
beyond the rock wall.

‘They will
come,’ said Gideon.

But it was full
night upon the delta by the time they heard the voice from above. By then the
wind had strengthened and the boat was slapped against the crumbling stone and
it was all they could do to fend it off.

‘Hist!’

A dark face full
of pant and sweat was bearing down upon them.

Etienne went
over the wall and held the boat steady while the Norman, Gideon and Jourdain helped
Jacques de Molay to climb to the top. The boat began to strike hard and the
Egyptian said, ‘I will come?’

Etienne sent his
voice full of condescension over the wall, ‘Stay!’

Delgado, all
smiles and fidgets of enthusiasm, stood before the three Templars and his
comrade and told them his story. ‘I have waited until I saw you come from the
galley. The horses are hid beyond the trees . . . I have a message . . .’

‘You saw
Geoffrey de Charney at Richerenches?’ asked Jacques de Molay.

‘I have a
message from this Geoffrey,’ Delgado said. ‘I am told to tell you: the shepherd
has turned wolf and Richerenches is not yours. That is what he said. He gave me
horses and food and a guide and told me to tell you to use . . . “soft feet”. What
does this mean, soft feet?’